»In which I turn pro

You don't have to be weird:

I don't know why I only looked for "The Fall" on YouTube now, but a trove indeed lies within. The Fall colour more of my memory than any other band, I think, from discovering "Live at the Witch Trials" (and the cover of Belle and Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister always reminds me of Live at the Witch Trials, not of The Trial), to obliquely bumping into Brix in college, to finally seeing them perform in concert for the first time (after years of swapping cassettes, — yes, cassettes — over Usenet), to chatting with a Kiwi who walked past the stoop only to find that he was their number one, yes, indeed, he was at the recording of Fall in a Hole. It's like that, see: The Fall bring people together.

Big New Prinz and Cruisers Creek.

I should also note that this morning, while waiting for a table at a popular bar-café, I asked the barman (at the four-seat bar) for a drink. A slightly greying man came back inside from smoking a cigarette, saw the barman pulling out a small jar of pickled pearl onions from a corner of the bar and remarked: "Must be an old-timer in here. No-one orders drinks like that," and looked around -- expecting what? someone rail-thin and in a three-piece, a slightly worn fedora atop a mostly bald pate? A comfortably portly man of prosperity, a well-loved tweed jacket over baggy trousers? And saw me, chuckling at being called an old-timer. The greying man went on to say that the Gibson is a great drink, and we agreed that it was good for mid-day (check), sunny weather (check), early afternoon (check), in fact, just about any time. "My father used to make those," he said.